Torture talk banned from 9/11 trial

This courtroom sketch by artist Janet Hamlin shows alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as he holds up a piece of paper during a court recess at his Military Commissions hearing.(AFP Photo / Janet Hamlin) / AFP

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind behind 9/11, was subjected to the torturous interrogation method known as waterboarding nearly 200 times during years of detention. The US won’t let that be brought up in court right just yet, though.

Government documents show that Mohammed, commonly abbreviated in
the media as KSM, was nearly drowned during water-boarding stunts
183 times after being captured in 2003 and moved to a secretive
Central Intelligence Agency prison, then to the military facility
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But as pretrial hearings for KSM and four
alleged co-conspirators are underway now at Gitmo, the government
has refused the defense’s pleas to allow discussions of torture
take place in the courtroom.

Army Colonel James Pohl, the judge overseeing the hearings, will
eventually have to decide to approve or reject an order drafted by
the prosecution that would subject all testimonies during the case
to a mandatory 40-second delay so as to prevent members of the
press and public alike from hearing about the torture methods used
on Gitmo detainees. Meanwhile, Col. Pohl told the defense on Monday
that torture was not at all relevant to day’s proceedings, despite
arguments from attorneys who insist otherwise.

On Monday, Col. Pohl presided over discussions that would
determine whether or not KSM and his co-conspirators — Ali Abdul
Aziz Ali, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa al Hawsawi and Walid bin Attash
— would have to be present in the courtroom during their eventual
trial, a matter which could yield death sentences for all five if a
guilty conviction is met. The men are all being charged with, among
other crimes, 2,976 counts of murder relating to the September 11,
2001 terrorist attacks and expect to finally be brought to trial
sometime in 2014.

Air Force Captain Michael Schwartz, an attorney representing
KSM, told Col. Pohl on Monday that taking his client and others
away from their prison cells and hauling them off in shackles to be
prosecuted before a panel of military members could remind them of
the years of torture they were subjected to under CIA watch and
thus inflect physical and emotional strains.

"We have to talk about torture," Schwartz told the
judge during day one of this week’s hearings.

"I'm telling you I don't think that's relevant to this
issue. That's the end of that," Pohl snapped back at the
attorney. "Are you having trouble hearing me? Move on to
something else!" the judge ordered.

Reuters reporters note that unlike earlier hearings at Gitmo,
this time the word “torture” was not censored from the spectators
listening in, something that is expected to change if a
government-ordered proposal is adopted by the court. A 40-second
delay has been ordered so as to censor any future murmurings of
those so-called “advanced interrogation techniques,” since largely
outlawed but still controversial nonetheless.

On their part, the government insists that publicizing the
first-hand accounts from KSM and others subjected to waterboarding
would risk making known the classified intelligence-gathering
techniques used by the US.

David Nevin, a co-counsel representing KSM, told Democracy Now!
this week that he believes the government is hard pursuing the
ordered delay because they want to ensure that their mishandlings
won’t make the alleged conspirators come off as the subjects of CIA
abuse.

“I’m talking about the United States of America tortured my
client for three-and-a-half years. It’s a capital case. Do you
think that’s something I might want to talk to Mr. Mohammed about?
Well, of course it is. But there, defined as 'contraband' in the
rules [of what detainees can talk about] is quote-unquote 'the
detention of any detainee,’” Mr. Nevin said.

"It is a court that is designed to achieve a conviction and
to do it in such a way that the truth never comes out about what
was done to our client, who did it and why, and what it
means."